Jaycee Lee Dugard Pictures | Picking Up the Pieces

Learning to live with freedom

You’ve heard about the girl found after 18 years by now. Her name is Jaycee Lee Dugard, and photos of her as a child – before she was abducted – are all over the World Wide Web. The kidnapped girl is found; she had been abducted by Philip Garrido, the owner of a church called “God’s Desire” in Antioch, California.

It is frightening to contemplate what life must have been like for Jaycee Lee Dugard as she spent 18 years of her life in a shack in Philip Garrido’s back yard. His wife was aware this was going on and was a conspirator. While there, she bore two children to the sex offender. Now that Jaycee Lee Dugard is free, what will life be like for her children? They were born in that shack. This will be the first time they’re in the outside world. The two girls are 11 and 15 years old. They’ve never been to school or seen a doctor. I wish Jaycee Lee Dugard and her family the best during the difficult times ahead. As they adjust to the outside world, they will no doubt face tremendous challenges, both psychological and physical. I hope Jaycee will have the means to support herself and her daughters; her birth family may even be of help. If see finds herself in a short-term financial emergency somewhere down the road, she could choose faxless payday loans to help.

But first, Jaycee Lee Dugard goes to court

The Detroit Free Press reports (http://www.freep.com/article/20090828/NEWS07/90828007/1322/Hidden-away-18-years—woman-bore-kidnapper-s-children”) that Jaycee appears in court today to testify against her rapist jailor. Phillip Garrido, 58, is being held on kidnapping and sex charges. His wife Nancy Garrido has also been arrested. He was already a registered sex offender on federal parole for rape and kidnapping convictions. Yet parole agents who visited his home were unable to detect what was going on in his back yard.

A traumatic incident

When Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped in 1991, her stepfather Carl Probyn saw it happen from a distance but was unable to intervene in time.

“As soon as I saw the door fly open, the driver’s door, I jumped on my mountain bike and I tried to get to the top of the hill but I had no energy,” Probyn remembers. “I rode back down and yelled at my neighbor, 911!”

The stress of her disappearance broke up his marriage to Jaycee’s mother, but both are overjoyed at the reappearance of daughter unseen in 18 years and grandchildren they’d never met. Thankfully, they appear to be in good physical health.

“He’s had her longer than we had her,” Probyn told ABC. “We had her for 11 years. He had her for 18.”

Leaflets and a camping shower

Philip Garrido had apparently indoctrinated Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters into his make-believe religion that seemed to be centered on his ideas that a higher power spoke to him through a box, and that said box granted him powers of telepathy. He took this so seriously that he distributed self-published “literature” and was building a compound for him to preach his psychotic gospel. That compound is where Jaycee Lee Dugard and her daughters were being kept. Neighbors admitted to hearing kids playing in the yard, but they never saw them. If only they’d gotten involved, perhaps this could have broken years ago.

If only

The compound had electricity, an outhouse and a camping shower, which made it easier for Philip Garrido to keep them locked away. I certainly hope he never used faxless payday loans to build that place. While it is obvious that Garrido abused Jaycee Lee Dugard, investigations are currently underway as to whether he did the same to Dugard’s daughters. In addition to the allegations of kidnapping, court records indicate both Philip Garrido and his wife are being held while investigation into whether they committed “rape by force, lewd and lascivious acts with a minor and kidnapping someone under 14 with intent to rape” commence.

John Walsh helped spread word

Back when Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped in 1991, the television program “America’s Most Wanted” publicized the incident to a wider audience. Unfortunately, Philip Garrido was meticulous enough to conceal her for 18 years. All they really had to go on was a description of the vehicle he was driving when he abducted Jaycee Lee Dugard, as well as a composite sketch of what he looked like.

Oh, the burden is lifted!

Rather than keeping his mouth closed, Philip Garrido has the audacity to come out in the media and claim it’s a “relief” that he’s been captured by the police… because it was such a burden to maintain the ruse! Maybe you should have listened close to that box, rapist. Perhaps it could have led you into a different endeavor, like hopping inside and having someone bury you in the yard instead.

What is most important now is that Jaycee Lee Dugard has custody of her children and the opportunity to live real lives awaits them. That’s all a parent can ask for.